Interested students should: Send a brief letter describing your interests and experience to Dr. Avena at navena@ufl.edu (**Note: Dr. Avena’s lab is in Princeton, NJ. Special arrangements may be made to work with motivated students.)

Lewis R. Baxter, M.D.
Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience

Research Area: Neuropharmacology and Toxicology; Brain function in social behaviors; Treatment of Mood and Anxiety disorders and co-morbid addictions.

Study topics include: Opportunities for independent as well as directed laboratory work, related to above, especially studies using invertebrate models.

C. Shawn Dotson, PhD

Study topics include: Dr. Dotson’s laboratory is dedicated to gaining a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying chemosensory function in mammals and how these functions, in turn, impact upon ingestive behaviors.

Gary Geffken, PhD & Joe McNamara, PhD

Research Area: Treatment of Anxiety Disorders, Sleep, Executive functioning, & treatment adherence. Specifically we are interested in the interaction of 4 areas listed.

Study topics include: We are doing a study looking at treatment outcomes with both children and adults who have OCD. During the course of this study, we are collecting information on sleep and treatment adherence. We are also conducting studies on pediatric sleep and OCD symptom severity, pilot testing a live coding system for exposure therapy, and executive functioning.

Interested students should: 1) have taken a few courses relevant to basic cell biology and surface membrane proteins , 2) be interested in microscopy and electrophysiology experimental approaches in single cell/single neuron. 3) email Dr. Khoshbouei at habibeh@ufl.edu .

Mark H. Lewis, Ph.D.

Research Area: Animal Models of Restricted Repetitive Behavior in Autism

Study topics include: Behavioral and neurobiological studies of the development and expression of abnormal repetitive behavior in deer mice and inbred mouse strains.

Interested students should: e-mail Dr. Lewis at marklewis@ufl.edu indicating their interest and background.

Study topics include: Treatment models for stress, obesity and insulin resistance; Intensive intervention of nurses suffering from obesity and codependency syndromes; Executive medicine: intensive disease state management of obesity and diabetes (for both the CEO and those he or she employs); Informaticmodels of cognitive psychotherapy relevant to medical psychiatry; Bariatric/medicalpsychiatry: learning the basics; Food addiction: practical clinicalintervention in medical psychiatry.

Interested students should:Call Dr. Shriner at 941-993-7441.

Kevin K.W. Wang, PhD

Executive Director, Center for Neuroprotepmics and Biomarker Research and Chief, Translational Research, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Neuroscience and Physiological Science

Research Area: We are actively working in the areas of traumatic brain and spinal cord injury, neurodegeneration (Alzheimer’s disease, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, Parkinson’s disease) and substance abuse induced brain alterations.

Study topics include: We use a multidisciplinary approach that combine in vitro neurochemical, biochemical and immuno-assays, proteomic analysis, cell culture model, animal models and translational research to clinical studies. We also use a holistic Systemic Biology approach to study the underlying mechanisms of various brain disorders, to identify disease-tracking biomarkers/molecular diagnostics and to test and develop novel pharmaceutical- or cell-based therapies to treat such diseases. http://mbi-cnbr.sites.medinfo.ufl.edu/